The present invention relates to puppets and, more particularly, to a garment wearable about the trunk of a user, including artwork and other indicia formed thereon depicting a humanized face and mouth, which when manually articulated by a user, causes the indicia on the puppet to momentarily assume varying facial expressions.
A variety of puppets have been disclosed in the prior art, the majority of which are worn about the hand of the user and typically manipulated between the thumb and forefingers of the hand to simulate the opening and closing of a mouth. As is well known, such prior art hand puppets usually are highly ornamented and designed to simulate a variety of fanciful characters. Although such prior art puppets have proven useful and entertaining in their general use, they typically have been relatively expensive to manufacture have required a substantial period of time on the part of a user to become proficient in their articulation, and further have necessitated the user to manually carry, store, and subsequently set up the puppet to its actual use. In addition, the prior art puppets have generally failed to integrate their use so as to be suitable for a teaching aid and have been primarily utilized merely for entertainment. As such, there exist a substantial need in the art for a relatively low-cost puppet which may be proficiently articulated by even the most inexperienced user, and conveniently carried and rapidly deployed by the user at the beginning of use of the puppet.